VMware "uses a badly-hacked Linux kernel" - claim

WHILE VMWARE IS SET to make a fortune from its IPO this week, Venture Cake magazine thinks the company could be headed for trouble.

At the centre of the magazine's concerns are its use of a "proprietary" ESX Server product, which may owe a little too much to Linux.

According to the outfit's FAQ, Vmware uses a Linux 2.4 kernel to boot the ESX Server virtualisation layer. Linux loads vmkernel, and then vmkernel virtualises Linux.

According to Linus Torvalds, such applications are derived works of Linux and Christopher Helwig is the Linux SCSI storage maintainer has been chasing VMware over the issue for a year.

He claims that VMware uses a "badly hacked 2.4 kernel with a big binary blob hooked into it", giving a derived work of the Linux kernel that's not legally redistributable.

But Helwig says he can't sue Vmware because he does not have enough copyrights on that particular version. He can sue the outfit on some matters and has been snarling at the company's legal department for a while. So far he has told the company that until it stops violating his copyrights nothing is going to be supported.

Still if the IPO makes a huge amount of money, it might be that the Linux crowd might want to take the outfit to the cleaners to get a share.

L'INQ
Venture Cake